A month or so ago, my Dad told me he had a slab of wood for me. OK, I thought, he sounds pretty excited about it so I’ll take a quick look at it to figure out what all his excitement is about. Worst case I have experiment wood: best case I can make something cool from it. Little did I know the best case scenario was pretty short sighted.

My Dad lives in Portland and I live in Boise. Dad rents a minivan and brings me this dingy, weather worn, cracked, burned, and roughly cut slab of wood proudly decorated with bird shit. As we unloaded The Slab I took a couple of pictures of my boys standing by it. Later that night I uploaded the pictures to my facebook account and forgot about it.

The next day started like any other. I made coffee, read some blogs, looked at a few projects on LumberJocks, checked out ESPN, and then looked at my facebook feed. When I was looking at facebook I saw the pictures I posted the night before of my Boys and the Slab.” I couldn’t believe what I saw.

After looking at the pictures for a few minutes I decide to head out to the garage and take a closer look at The Slab. What I thought was dirt turned out to be extensive quilting in the wood. The burning was just on one edge of the board and not only was easily cleaned but looks phenomenal. The crack is only 8 inches or so and happens to occur at a good cut point anyway. The bird shit… well its bird shit.

Didn’t take long to realize The Tree The Slab came from must have been huge, massive, damn thing was BIG!!! I wondered aloud how old The Tree was… I heard it whispered, “Old? I was old when the world was young.” I needed to look take a closer look at The Slab so I busted out my RO sander and went to work on a corner. After a sanding through a couple of 80 grit disks I had a 3 foot by 4 foot area cleaned off. I grabbed a bit of Tung oil and started to apply it.

I immediately remembered my Dad telling me The Slab had been stored in this guys attic for four plus decades. Or in other words the wood is pretty dry. It drank up the oil so I ended up pouring it on the cleaned off area. This is what I saw:

After checking my bladder and making sure I didn’t have to change my shorts… I steadied myself and said, “Wow.” That’s it, nothing more, nothing else.

It is old growth redwood from a tree felled a century ago. I’m working on the next blog now that continues the story… :)

I have had multiple offers from people to take some of The Slab off my hands. So far the most compelling offer was from somebody who said he would make a Native American flute out of it. I am considering cutting a section off for somebody in return for same blogging, pictures, and a sample of their work. More details to follow after I figure out the details. Bottom line is there will be some sort of competition to get a section of The Slab in the near future!!! This wood is to rare and beautiful to be hoarded!!!